Pelosi: Trump has shown 'complete disregard for the Constitution'

You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters

By Lindsey Ellefson (CNN)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused President Donald Trump on Tuesday of disregarding constitutional checks on power in his recent series of tweets supporting his travel ban.

"I think, frankly, what he is talking about is a complete disregard for the Constitution," Pelosi said in response to a question from "New Day" anchor Chris Cuomo on why Trump deployed senior White House officials to defend his controversial response to the London attacks on social media.

In particular, Pelosi said Trump was flouting the judicial checks on power by continuing to tout his proposed ban, which has been repeatedly struck down in the courts. The Justice Department last week asked the Supreme Court to review the ban.

The California Democrat also went on to accuse Trump of writing controversial tweets in order to keep attention on himself rather than important policy issues.

"He doesn't care," she said, as long as the focus is on him, "good, bad, or indifferent."

Pelosi then wondered when Trump will fulfill some of his campaign promises and move forward his legislative agenda.

"There hasn't been very much progress," Pelosi said, recapping what she said she'd heard from her Republican colleagues.

In a string of tweets early Monday morning and a follow-up tweet later in the day, Trump reiterated comments he made in light of the London terror attacks that the travel ban was necessary.

"People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN," he tweeted at 6:25 a.m. ET.

"The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C." he added.

Trump's suggestion that changes to the ban -- which, among other things, temporarily restricts travel to the US from several Muslim-majority countries -- were due to political correctness could hamper his administration's legal argument that the executive order did not target Muslims. As a candidate, Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslim immigration to the United States, and Justice Department lawyers have gone to great lengths to avoid calling it a "travel ban" in court, referring to it as a "temporary pause" or simply "the executive order."